Spontaneous Generation
by
Chris Dee

Queen
of the Night

Women. If there was anything Ivy hated – truly hated
with burning fury, hated with a fiery molten abhorrence that churned inside her
like a volcanic whirlpool – it was women. Worse than men, worse than
lumberjacks, worse than Batman. What were men after all but rutting stupid
animals doing what rutting stupid animals did? You couldn’t expect
better from a man. You could not expect better from any given penis-bearer than
being less objectionable than Batman, less hateful than Joker, less odious than
a lumberjack. Women on the other hand had the capacity to bond with Nature,
connect to the very essence of the God Force and bring forth life—and they
did nothing with it. Even in her mind’s ear, the last words seethed
with contempt, the inner voice that had soared with godly grandeur shriveling
into the venomous croak of a cartoon witch.

Her head tipped back and she sucked air as deeply as she
could, that burning whirlpool inside her craving coolness. Again. And again.
And again.

Claire Sabana had been chosen. She was chosen! It
couldn’t be by chance that Ivy happened to meet a woman so wholly in tune with
the animal kingdom on the very eve of this transformation. Gaia herself had
brought them together, the plant woman and the horse woman, so Claire could
advise her on the animal side of the new world order, and the stupid horse lover
refused her. More than refused, she’d been repulsed. More than repulsed, she’d
come at her with a knife. More than a knife, a knife the sick lunatic had been
using to chop vegetables.

Again the head tipped back. Again Ivy breathed in as
deeply as she could. Her lips were sour with the taste of adrenaline and fury.
It mingled with the air she sucked in, which now seemed to feed rather than
quell the fire burning down her sternum.

How could it happen? How could it all go so wrong? They
met on the very eve of this transformation. She liked being with horses more
than people. She found people exhausting. Horses were herbivores. It was
Fate. It was Destiny. They’d found each other, they were meant to work
together, and that wretched woman who had been chosen had just,
just, just messed it all up!

Bruce was a detective and a scientist. That meant
maintaining a rational and objective view of the world and not indulging in
fanciful ideas about the Universe having a laugh at his expense. Yes, the
driver was an ex-con Batman recognized. Bruce reminded himself that he’d chosen
a not-wholly-reputable car service with this goal in mind: he wanted to insure
this final appearance as the playboy wasn’t wasted, he wanted to insure it would
be well-photographed, and when you set out to get a driver who lines his pockets
tipping off the tabloids, Vinnie Lappet is who you expect rolling up in an
ostentatious white stretch limo. As a young punk, he’d dealt for The Roman,
very small time, supplying a few clubs in North Little Italy before anybody even
considered calling it NoLIta. Two minor busts that didn’t result in much jail
time, then his one attempt henching for a theme rogue—strike three—sent him to
Blackgate for a lengthy stretch. But he’d still have the contacts which
would make him desirable as a limo driver.

It was a short drive from Wayne Plaza where Bruce met the
car to the Roff Paramount where they’d pick up the girls. He wouldn’t waste
time being subtle:

“If my friends and I want to have a party, you can hook us
up?” he asked with a debauched grin.

“Oh yeah, I’ve got all the fashionable party supplies on
me,” Vinnie said. “O, C, X, R, K, MM, MDMA. Anything unusual can be arranged
too, but I’ll have to make a stop.”

“Quite the alphabet,” Bruce said, leaning towards the
partition with several large bills folded between his fingers. “That won’t be
your answer if the ladies ask,” he ordered, handing over the tip.

Vinnie nodded his agreement and that was that. It was the
one aspect of the Fop’s snobbery that Bruce approved of: he didn’t owe you an
explanation. The payoff was your explanation, the payoff put you in a category. He understood your reasons—the money—and part of what that bought him was that
you did not have to understand his. So the rest of the ride to the
Paramount was spent in silent contemplation of the back of Lappet’s head.

Once the Lund sisters arrived, the ride to Wine Riot was
spent in a bubbly two-part narrative of their flight to Gotham on a Lufthansa
Airbus A340-300. Bruce would have liked to hear a little more about the
aircraft, one of his favorites that wasn’t manufactured by Wayne Aerospace.
Instead he heard about the oxtail soup and roast goose, the dessert wines, and
the other first class passenger who they thought was Samuel L. Jackson even
though he denied it. To appear interested, Bruce mentally recited what he knew
of the Airbus A340-300 with its four engines that could easily exceed 800 KPH,
achieve an altitude over 12,000 meters, and with a full tank could travel over
12,000 kilometers without refueling. Aloud he said only that Lufthansa had the
friendliest and loveliest stewardesses. Then he thought of Selina—damn her—and one
of those first visits to d’Annunzio’s when they first began dating. He got a
bit carried away talking about the Airbus A380 and she… was smiling. She was
smiling like it was the finest moment of her life and looking at him like he was
wonderful. When all he’d done was talk too much and in far too much detail
about an airplane with remarkable lift for its size.

He squelched the memory and with steely Bat-focus replaced
it with another. On his earliest fop dates, he came up with an exercise: he
would take some hypothesis and, as a detective, devise up to five questions
appropriate to the shallow, superficial character he was creating. Up to
five questions appropriate to Bruce Wayne the playboy idiot that would get the
information he needed to confirm or disprove the hypothesis.

“So then we see in the in-flight magazine there is article
on Monaco, and we look, and there we are! Outside the Chanel boutique. And we
are holding hands and posing…”

So, a hypothesis.

“We are in the short white dress, you know the one, and we
each wear the solbriller, the how you say sun-glass,
and we each have the black Chanel bag on our arm with the black Chanel
shopping bag under that. Oh it is a wonderful picture.”

Bruce considered that first class passenger. He wondered
if it could have been Phillip Storr, CEO of a prestigious European olive oil
concern who was sometimes mistaken for Samuel L. Jackson when he traveled.

“But then Lise remembers, we hadn’t been inside the store
yet when we pose for this. The shopping bags we had were from Herve Leger.
They change the name on the bags with eh, oh, what is it called, they use it to
remove flab and cellulite on all the tykk models—den Photoshop.”

So, three to five questions… Bruce opened the bar, just to
“see what their options were” for the return trip, since they wouldn’t want to
spoil their palates before Wine Riot. As expected, there was a Johnny Walker
Black Label and he bemoaned that it wasn’t the far costlier Blue. He indulged
in a brief reminiscence of the excellence of the Blue Label, squelched the trivia he
knew about why it didn’t indicate how old it was on the bottle (though it was
more interesting, and said a lot about scotch snobs like the one he was
pretending to be), and how popular the Blue Label was with connoisseurs like
himself and the nouveau riche—like all those Hollywood celebs. He asked
about “their friend” on the plane.

They squealed with delight. Though at first the man who
looked like Samuel Jackson said that he didn’t drink when he traveled and seldom
drank at all, he did have two glasses of Johnny Walker Blue Label before
dinner!

The inner Bruce grunted in satisfaction. If he was with
Selina, he might have indulged in a genuine lip-twitch, but instead, he produced
a showy laugh for the twins. Like Bruce, Phillip wasn’t much of a drinker, but
when he did indulge, it was generally Johnny Walker Blue Label on long,
transatlantic flights. Though it had nothing to do with the hypothesis, Bruce
also noted that Lise and Lili displayed none of the usual, coded disdain for
someone saying they didn’t drink. He was not proclaimed a buzzkill, a wet
blanket or even a vått teppe. Presumably because they thought he was a
movie star, they found all he said and did charming. From the little vial
of home-made hot sauce he emptied on his lamb roast to his gourmet’s assessment
of the ice cream served with his crumble to his pet peeve about the grapes
sitting next to the stinky cheese on the cheese tray… Inner Bruce’s brow knit in
consternation.

Well, it was Phillip Storr. But in only one question? It
used to be an achievement when he could do it in three. Was he that much better
a detective now, or was it luck?

In the fourteen centuries since Jason Blood became
immortal, medicine had changed in many ways, but not in the way doctors behaved
when they had no idea what was going on. Jason didn’t know either: what
happened to Claire, what caused that bizarre disintegration of her clothing, or
whether a doctor was better equipped than a wizard to figure it out. The
hospital was better equipped to make her comfortable, however. They could
identify and treat symptoms, get her stable and then Jason could…

His lip curled. He was resigned to waiting. Immortality
had taught him patience, and indeed taught him to use the drawing out of time in
the same way Batman drew on darkness. Sentient foes nearly always became
impatient, even immortal ones like himself would often become unnerved either by
the empty time itself or by Jason’s indifference to it. On those occasions when
there was no sentient adversary, when there was only the realities of the
Universe to contend with, there seemed to be a grudging respect for the man who
did not rush things. He who accepted that things took a natural amount of time
to play out and did not seek to bend nature to his will.

The only thing Jason didn’t like about waiting,
particularly today, was Etrigan. The prospect of sitting alone on that
too-comfortable visitors’ couch, so clearly designed for relatives that would be
waiting hours upon hours for news... He didn’t mind the waiting itself, but the
prospect waiting with that crowing demon in his head might have tempted him to
place a magic finger into the clockwork. It really might have, until he saw the
figure down the hall seated on a similarly too-comfortable couch. He hurried to
greet her, noting the trench coat covering most of her costume.

“Selina?” he asked, guessing that it was
permissible to call her by name since she was unmasked and the tell-tale gloves
were removed.

She nodded and he sat beside her. He
asked gently if Bruce was the patient she was waiting for, and learning he
wasn’t, Jason pointed two fingers discreetly at her broken boot heel.

“In that case, what he doesn’t know cannot upset him,”
Jason decreed.

Selina glanced down to see her boot repaired and thanked
him dryly. Then she returned to the pertinent topic:

“I’m here with Ed Nigma and a henchman. They had some
trouble with Poison Ivy.”

“Curious,” Jason said. “She was in such good spirits at
the polo grounds, comparatively speaking. As amicably disposed as I’d ever seen
her.”

“Well she’s not now. Attack plants bigger than Etrigan and
not nearly as friendly.”

“Selina, I will never understand you!” Jason snapped.
“You’ve taken my hand in a Seeing ritual, you’ve felt Etrigan’s malice and you
still speak of him like he’s one of your amusing friends from the Iceberg.
Sure, they may menace the city now and then, but what are a few lives lost with
such a ripping bridge partner!”

“Jason, who are you here for and how bad is it?” she asked
gently.

“I apologize,” he said.

“Not necessary. Who is it and how serious?” she asked
again.

“I’ll wager you’ve never said ‘ripping’ in your life and
you don’t play bridge,” he grumbled. It got no response other than an I’ll-wait
expression that Jason sensed she used with her cats. “I’m here for Claire.
Dr. Sabana. I’ve no idea how serious, no idea what’s wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Selina said.

“I should have asked about your friend Nigma. How serious
are his injuries at the hands of these attack plants?”

He didn’t hear much of her answer. She said something
about strangulation marks, but then Etrigan made himself conspicuous, filling
Jason’s nostrils with the smell of smoking sulfur when Selina mentioned burns
from steam. A flash of memory transported him to 1919, the furnaces on the
Mauretania, and then to that sweltering summer in Istanbul. Both were gone in
an instant, but the flashes were enough to keep him from making the connection
that mustn’t come a moment too soon.

Bruce knew there were people who called him paranoid.
Without exception, they were people who did not have criminals and psychopaths
plotting to kill them on a regular basis, or else they had superpowers to fall
back on when they flew into unknown situations without a plan. Bruce didn’t
consider it paranoia to be alert and observant, and he didn’t think it paranoid
to distrust coincidence. Too often there was a hidden cause and effect that you
would only find if you looked. As a detective, a scientist, and a man who’d
been besieged by magic, he would only accept a coincidence after he ‘looked.’

The first coincidence of Wine Riot he was prepared to
dismiss after the briefest moment of consideration: Lise and Lili were snobs.
They relied on labels and brand names to avoid exercising their own judgment and
potentially making a mistake, and they were here with him now because he’d made
Bruce the Playboy into just such a brand. Being snobs, though every significant
wine-growing region was represented, they wanted to start with France. It was
the obvious and the least imaginative choice, and it meant walking right past a
booth that included Château de Poulignac. As in Count de Poulignac, Selina’s
first boyfriend, the cat burglar. Coincidence could mean magic was afoot, but
like Vinnie Lappet, this wasn’t much of a coincidence. France was the most
important wine region in the world, de Poulignac was a French wine, Lise and
Lili were too insecure to start anywhere other than the place said to be the
best. Tres Bien.

The second development wasn’t a coincidence at all. More
of a needling irony that revived the idea of the Universe pranking him. Despite
the DJ, the photo booths, a temporary tattoo station and carnival atmosphere,
Wine Riot was a wine tasting. It looked like a street party, felt like
the early hours of Mardi Gras, but every few steps he passed a discreet station
to spit or pour out his glass. To have discovered such a happening on his
very last appearance as the playboy. He could be seen drinking to excess
without consuming a mouthful of alcohol, which was like most of his Fop
appearances, except that here it was completely effortless. If only such
events were available when he got started.

At the same time, Lise and Lili were well-lubricated. They
weren’t drunk or even buzzed, but the natural snobbery that brought them to the
Bordeaux booth had relaxed into easygoing smiles when he suggested they
investigate Chilean reds. Batman placed a satisfied checkmark next to both of
their names as he steered them out of Bordeaux. He had no desire to see
his dates drunk, but he preferred their perceptions slightly dulled, just enough
that they would fail to notice any little slip—like his knowing a bit too much
about genetic mapping of pre-phylloxera vines from Haut-Bailly.

It wasn’t exactly a slip, it was more of a… failure to
fop. He knew what he should say, he just couldn’t do it. Like having
his will short circuited by a Mad Hatter mind control chip, he could not look
into the eyes of that earnest young woman pouring in the Bordeaux booth and
blither something idiotic about Monsanto.

The Great Wine Blight began with an aphid called
phylloxera—in the mid 19th century. It was not something you made
light of with the French, it was not something you confused with the GMOs those
funny protestors got so worked up about. To survive, most of the delicate
French vines had been grafted onto phylloxera-resistant American rootstocks.
Knowing that much, while not taking full advantage of the opportunity to appear
as stupid as possible, was forgivable. Pre-phylloxera wines were, after all, a
delicacy of delicacies. Supremely rare, supremely expensive, the sort of
thing Bruce Wayne would have known, coveted and occasionally bought the way Lise
and Lili collected designer handbags.

But that Bruce Wayne’s eyes should have glazed over
at the mention of Alcide Bellot Des Minieres as a man who believed in using
scientific methods to improve viticulture and bought the Haut-Bailly vineyard in
1872. He should have tuned out the earnest young woman and her sales talk,
sipped his wine and thought ahead to the debauchery ahead at Queen of the
Night. He shouldn’t have even heard how Des Minieres believed the graft of
American rootstocks would result in wines of lesser quality and refused to use
them. He shouldn’t have heard how American rootstocks were planted later but
that, even today, Haut-Bailly still had fifteen percent of its old vines dating
from the pre-phylloxera period. Not having heard either piece of crucial
information, he should never have been able to connect them into the
earth-shaking implication. His first thought was the immediate and greedy one:
pre-phylloxera wines were still being produced, and he couldn’t wait to
tell Selina. The second thought hit as the woman began to say it:

“If you have grafted and ungrafted vines that have been
growing in exactly the same soil and the same micro-climate for a hundred
years,” he said, quietly but with a Christmas-morning-toy-truck glint in his
eye, “you can compare the DNA. You can isolate the genomes from the American
rootstocks.”

“And theoretically remove it,” the woman concluded, excited
to have such a receptive listener.

“Not just from the Haut-Bailly stocks,” Bruce told her. “Theoretically,
once you’ve got the complete map of the contamination, any French
vineyard could roll back their vines to a pre-phylloxera state.”

“Oh no, Brucie elskling, look. That awful Filippa
has passed me again with the Instagram followers, and Sigrid has past Lili.”

“Yes, right,” Bruce said, kicking himself for
the lapse and looking at her phone with concern.

“Models,” Lili explained. “Filippa from Paris. Lots of
pictures of her in bikinis by ocean. Couple fashion spreads. Then lots more
pictures in bikini by ocean.”

“Sigrid is from Martinique,” Lisa added, taking over the
sitrep. “Selfies in bed. Selfies by pool. One with some paint poured down on
her face. Then back to selfies.”

“Don’t worry, darlings,” Bruce fopped. “Once we’ve made our
entrance at Queen of the Night, you’ll surpass Laura Sfez herself. In
the meantime, let’s take a few shots here to tide them over. One with that
giant glass—there we go—then head over to the Queensland booth and see what our
friends down under are pouring.”

Selina Kyle had a scrumptiously vengeful spirit. Another
time, Etrigan would have spent this time seasoning it like a rare delicacy. Her
friend had been hurt, but she wasn’t thinking about retribution, not yet. The
demon could easily fix that, a crash call would get her mind moving in the right
direction, but this was no time for tawdry pleasures. Not with the key to
his cage all but slid into the lock.

Edward Nigma was awake and the doctor permitted a visitor.
Etrigan wished him to have two, so he clouded the nurse’s perception enough to
exclude Jason accompanying Selina into his room. Jason would need no prompting;
gallantry and boredom would keep him at her side. The rest came down to a roll
of the dice… Like the old Roman Emperors playing Tesserae while the blood was
flowing in the arena, Etrigan liked gambling.

Queen of the Night was called “a dark debutante
ball” and guests were told to dress to impress the queen. It wasn’t the kind of
suggestion the Lund sisters took lightly, and their emergence from the long,
white limousine lit up the curb in front of the Paramount Hotel in a lightshow
of flashes. The tabloid photographers behind a rope had to compete with a
dozen amateurs with cell phones who were closer and more creative with eclectic
angles that conveyed the glamour of the scene. Queen of the Night had seen its
share of flamboyant celebrity entrances, but nothing quite like the Jetset Twins in
their identical ivory mini-dresses with their identical crystal halos and
identical ivory clutches, oozing from the stretch limo whose color had seemingly
been chosen to match their couture. The doorman, who was supposed to tell
the crowd that the three people who came up and described the best sexual
fantasy would be let in first, was working on ways to vary the line.

He opted for the usual wording, but then with a significant
glance at the twins added: “In the interests of a level playing field, I’m going
to add one stipulation tonight, that it be a fantasy that you’ve had since at
least noon today.”

There was appreciative tittering, and the tabloid guy who
was close enough to Bruce whispered “Dude, you’re my hero.”

A peripheral glance told him the guy was from the Post, and
Bruce had an impulse to turn away as if from an unpleasant smell. The impulse
was borne of loyalty to Selina, but ironically, the thought that stopped him was
that much of his present and impending happiness was owed to their piss poor
journalism. If they hadn’t offended her so badly, pushed her to a reaction
mounting Cat-Tales… Bruce turned to the guy and said “The Post, right? Your
coverage of the Torpman trial was very good.”

With that, he turned back to the twins. Lise was still
beside him, but Lili had gone to whisper her deepest desires to the doorman. “I
think we can handle that for you,” he told her with a knowing wink.

“’Lina,” Eddie said with a pained grin as she walked into
the room, adding a less enthused “and friend” when Jason followed. “Things were
a little hazy towards the end there, but did you put me in a closet with some
kind of a giant tree monster and then blow it up? And if so why?”

“Botched rescue. Sorry,” she said.

“Buy me dinner like the old days, we’ll call it even,” he
said amiably, then his eyes shifted to Jason. “Your friend’s Justice League,”
he said disapprovingly.

“Charming. Having failed to disabuse the
heroes themselves of that idea, I must now contend with an equally misinformed
criminal element,” Jason said testily.

Selina made a show of concealing her smile, then said “He’s
really not, Eddie” and proceeded with the formal introduction. “Jason Blood,
Edward Nigma, though you seem to know each other by rep. Jason’s in the same
boat I am, actually. Do them a favor once because you happen to be there and
the world’s caving in, Superman says ‘thank you’ and they automatically put you
on a list as their cat thief on call.”

“Whatever,” Eddie said in a tired voice that
could have been either boredom with the subject or painkillers. “Look,
salient point is that between the two of you, somebody can get a message to
Batman. Let me give you the bullet points on Darth Ivy, the crazed psycho we all used to call
Poison. ‘Poison’ was the good old days, doesn’t that just say it all. She’s
split down the center now, half green—and I mean really green—and half regular
skin. Like Two-Face without the endearing coin flip.”

He paused, noting identically raised eyebrows on both his
listeners, and he reiterated:

“Yes, I said endearing. Fifty-fifty chance it could go
your way. A fifty-fifty chance would not be amiss when you’re looking at the
business end of a snapping flytrap. Don’t believe me, just ask Zed or the
corpse in that cocoon hanging from the ceiling.” He huffed belligerently,
glanced at the heart monitors and continued more calmly. “Anyway, it’s not just
cosmetic. The attack plants have gotten smarter somehow; it’s like they get
infused with more of her when she animates them. ’Lina, y’remember how they
used to just go to pieces and flop around ten, fifteen minutes after she’d
left? Not anymore. They keep going for hours. It’s like creepy
independent thinking. Smarter than a Robin.”

Preserving Nigma’s assumption that all three of them didn’t
know Batman’s identity, Jason said he would forward the message.

“Tell him to drop-kick her ass back into Arkham,” Eddie
said bitterly. “Tell him to be quick about it. If she’s still out there when I
get out there, I won’t be so cordial about it. Did I tell you the clothes
thing?”

“What… clothes thing?” Jason said with an edge that
reminded Riddler of the Dark Knight.

Eddie recognized a dangerous man when he saw one. He
looked at Jason with new eyes and spoke with subtle emphasis, as if he knew he
was loading a gun.

“What she did to Zed. What she did to the cop in that
cocoon. She can control cloth now. Fibers in cotton, hemp, flax. They just
spring to life and start burrowing. It looks real painful, going by the
screaming.”

“That is enlightening,” Jason said formally. “Thank you,
Mr. Nigma. You are an able man, intelligent and observant, and I grieve at the
ordeal you have suffered. When we next meet, I will see that you prosper.
Selina, you have chosen your friends well. A pleasure as always.”

With that, he practically clicked his heel as he turned and
left the room.

It wasn’t unusual for audience members to be separated from
their party as they were led down the derelict but once grand staircase to the
supper club beneath the Paramount. Lili had, of course, been admitted
first with the other adventurous souls who impressed the doorman. As the
rest of them made their way down the winding staircase decorated by antique
piles of champagne flutes, Bruce noted attendants lurking—with surprising stealth given
the eye-catching nature of their white-and-black halters and short-shorts—to
attach themselves to an arm here, or to clasp a hand there, and lead the chosen
one off to who-knows-where. The art on the walls was exotic, leaving no
doubt that one was entering a nocturnal playground, and there was a whiff of
burnt sage that hinted at ritual.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs where a Phantom of the
Opera-sized chandelier had seemingly crashed into even more ancient champagne
glasses, they were offered drinks. Not far away, a topless woman stood
behind a glass wall, writing cryptic messages on the glass in red lipstick—the
implication was if you viewed this with anything but suave Gotham urbanity,
you’d better have a drink.

Bruce noted audience members being pulled aside, seemingly
at random, and marked for different experiences. One might be given a paste-on
rhinestone teardrop, one a gnomic necklace, one might return with a ribbon tied
around their wrist or a letter written on their skin. What it meant nobody
knew, except for one man—a hedge fund manager who clearly recognized Bruce and
was angling to strike up an acquaintance—who was told that his mark entitled him
to a free drink. His partner, more well-versed in the show’s reviews than
anyone else in the crowd, thought there was probably more to it. The
drinks were to loosen everyone up, and a free one certainly meant that his
partner would be approached for something shocking before the night was out.

“Like what?” Lise asked excitedly.

“Oh, asked to perform. Taken up on stage with a total
stranger to feed each other saffron flowers, or off to the Queen’s private
boudoir to bathe the princess in coconut milk…”

Bruce was no longer listening; the mention of the flower
had reminded him of Ivy. The ambulance had come and gone by the time he reached
the greenhouse, but the wreckage that remained told the tale. Whatever had
happened there had been… extreme. Obviously it was nothing Catwoman couldn’t
handle, but he was impatient for a full debriefing. He was also impatient to go
back and investigate the basement, but the herbicide pellets he’d tossed down
the stairs would need another six hours to complete their work. He could
always…

Instinct shut down his internal monologue. Something was
happening. Without appearing to turn, he shifted his balance, eyes, and
awareness until he could pinpoint what it was… He was being watched,
sized up… He sipped his drink and, in the course of that move, noticed Lise’s
bracelet. Turning a little more as he complimented it, he was able to scan the
perimeter of dim and irregular lighting that surrounded them… Ideal concealment
from the other guests, but Bruce was so used to discerning pattern and movement
in darkness, he spotted the stalker without effort. A man. 5’8 or 5’9. With a
whip or a rope… a rope. With that angle of approach, preparing to lasso him,
literally, as the group made their way to the marble bar topped with tubes and
oversized bubbling beakers that resembled Dr. Ivo’s lab—or even Dr. Frankenstein’s.

A night of interactive theatre meant he would have to
endure some encounter, and the public Bruce Wayne was far too worldly to react
with anything but enthusiasm. He’d have to play along with something, but it
wasn’t going to be that. Without changing his position or his focus, he simply…
thought of Joker. He aimed a spike of revulsion at the shadow where the
attendant with the lasso thought he was concealed, and then… felt the shift.
Like a would-be mugger seeing their prey walk with the forceful gait, the young
man was switching targets. Without knowing why, he was now searching the crowd
for someone who seemed like more fun.

“Brucie elskling, you must try this. Infused with
rosemary. What did you say it is called?”

“The Queen’s Bush,” the leather-clad bartender told
her, though he sensed her English wasn’t good enough to get the joke. “We have
also A Willing Gentleman and The Marchesa’s Caprese,” he added,
noting that Bruce did no more than wet his lips from the glass Lise was holding
to his mouth. Sensing one who didn’t want alcohol of any sort, rather than
alcohol that didn’t taste like insalata caprese, he discreetly provided a tinted
beaker of Perrier and was rewarded with the largest tip he would ever receive.

They wandered. The preshow was a positive labyrinth of
secret nests and forbidden encounters. There was a room with walls covered in
dripped candle wax where one of the guests Bruce saw marked at the door held a
shard of mirror while a performer danced for her in the reflection. There was a
fur- and mirror-lined boudoir where a man sat barefoot while a woman studied him
adoringly and stroked his face with a feather. It brought a revolting Talia
flashback, and merely to chase the thought from his mind, Bruce investigated a
curtain of tinkly shells—only to find a knife-throwing act in progress, which
brought an even more revolting flashback. Bruce did notice that the woman
acting as the target was another of those he saw marked at the door, and he
considered solving the guest-selection and symbol-marking matrix as a new
problem to keep his mind occupied for the night. He got no farther than that
when he heard the duet of girlish squeals that meant Lise and Lili were
reunited. He scurried back the way he came—there was the sound of a whip
cracking somewhere which he chose not to investigate, even though it hinted at a
more appealing flashback than the previous one—and found his dates comparing
notes in a magician’s office brimming with curios.

“I got to meet the queen! There was serious eye contact
and light petting,” one reported.

“I read erotica to the Princess while she had her bath and
this cute man in a perfect beard and awful bangs shaved her legs.”

The room was full of trick drawers, and Bruce pretended to
explore them rather than intrude on the sisters’ giggling disclosures. Some
drawers opened, some didn’t, some had surprises, some held nothing. The playboy
pose disappeared into a scowl as he looked down into one such empty drawer. The
room was too like a Riddler puzzle, and it reminded him Nigma was at the
hospital. He considered ditching Lise and Lili to visit the men’s room in order
to call Selina for an update.

He took no more than a step into the dimly lit hall when
the women were back at his side. Lili had been told “a secret” in the
course of her adventure. The labyrinth was filled with secrets, she confided,
which the attendants would tell if you played along and they liked the look of
you. There was something about the wallpaper in the bathrooms,
the pattern would change if you looked long enough. It had nothing to do with
the drinks (pause for more giggling tittlers) but had something to do with the
lighting.

Bruce did his best to fake as much interest in the optical
illusion as he had genuinely felt about the genetic mapping at Wine Riot, but
the effort was cut short. Once again instinct said he was being watched,
this time a mere moment before he felt his hand taken—which was lucky because it
would have been awkward if Batman’s reflexes had backhanded the young woman into
the wall. Very awkward considering she was now, uh, fondling his hand
like a rare and mysterious bauble—sparking another unwelcome flashback.

“Charming,” Bruce said as one well-versed in the etiquette
of such encounters, and noting in his peripheral vision that Lise had been
similarly accosted. Pushed gently against the wall by another curious
attendant, she was now being intensely sniffed.

“You smell like desire,” Bruce heard her new friend murmur,
when a delicate kiss on the tip of his fingers drew his attention back to his
own new acquaintance. His hand was guided to rest on her naked hip.

“This way,” she tugged. “And I’ll tell you a secret.”

The hallways were dimly lit and smelled of frankincense,
which like the incense on the stairs, created a sense of ritual. The theme of
the evening might be a party, but it was one where the pursuit of pleasure was
practically a sacrament.

“Say ‘yes’ to everything,” she whispered before
handing him off at the entrance to an antechamber where a stuffed and bejeweled
leopard stood sentinel.

A stunned Selina looked to an equally stunned Eddie, then
hurriedly followed Jason from the room. He wasn’t in the hall but the nurse
was, looking a bit stunned herself. She pointed to an orange line on the floor
and said he went that way, though Selina hadn’t asked. She said Patient Sabana
was in room 861, though again, Selina hadn’t asked. She said to follow the
orange line to room 861, and after Selina thanked her, she said it again and
walked away blinking.

Selina hurried down the hall, following the orange line,
mind racing through the options. She wasn’t inexperienced with magicians on a
tear, but everything she knew of Jason Blood said he was more problematic than a
lecherous Felix Faust. A suspicion that was confirmed as she caught up
with him and he wheeled around to face her with a stare that could silence a
banshee.

“I will thank you to not interfere,” he said
with the intensity she associated with the phrase “Catwoman, put it back.” It
produced a gesture somewhere between surrender and jazz hands.

“No interfering,” she said reassuringly. “Standing beside
you as a friend, just like you did me; helping if I can. Extra set of hands if
you need them. Extra pair of eyes. That’s all.”

Selina told herself she meant it, for now. She wasn’t
going to interfere in the next two minutes, at least, so if Jason could detect a
lie as easily as Superman, there should be nothing to set off the magical
polygraph. She hoped.

Jason looked skeptical for a moment, and then
nodded.

“Not eyes or hands,” he said piercingly, “but you could
lend me your voice.”

Selina blinked. “Uhm,” she began.

“Lend Claire your voice,” he explained. “I am
loathe to sift through her unconscious mind, but I feel I can no longer sit idly
by. Before, I was prepared to do just that, but with what your friend Nigma
just told us, I feel if I must sit here doing nothing—knowing
nothing—until she wakes, I shall run mad.”

Etrigan helpfully reminded him that if Claire were to die,
Jason could easily raise her ghost for a chat. Jason called him the son of a
jackal by a hell-spawn whore, and Etrigan said thank you. Jason made a fist and
returned his attention to Selina.

“When I found Claire, her clothing was all but reduced to
powder. I couldn’t guess what kind of radiation or other modern abomination
might be responsible, but my mind was running along those lines. I did not
conceive of an attack. Now I can’t conceive of anything else. But I
cannot act without being sure. I must confirm the suspicion.

“If you would permit, a simple spell will allow Claire to
speak through you, so I can talk with her. Ask her about what happened without
intruding into her mind. It would be as though she and I were talking in the
usual way. You would remain completely aware, you must simply… refrain from
speaking so that Claire may have your voice.”

“Uh-huh,” Selina said as a horserace of thoughts jockeyed
for position. She didn’t like it. She owed him. And there was that part about
being aware. Either she was going to take on this Darth Ivy or Batman would.
Either way, an eyewitness account of what they were up against would not be
amiss.

Bruce was a better actor than anyone associated Queen of
the Night, and he appeared to enjoy his individual pre-show experience like
a man who hadn’t done this a few hundred times before: a dark and mysterious
labyrinth leading to a bizarrely themed and insanely elaborate room (this one
had walls covered in pearlescent shells), going one on one with a bizarrely
intense and potentially insane inhabitant playing some game only they
understood, nothing explained, having to figure it out as he went...

“Have you ever been in love?”

At least in those situations, he didn’t have to
pretend he wasn’t annoyed.

“You’re very direct,” he told his interrogator.

“I’m not direct. I’m deliberate,” she replied.

Eye contact. There were four natural types:
confident, intimate, liar and psychopath. Then there was this: the gaze
cultivated by the professional dominatrix. This was the last but in the eyes of
someone who couldn’t hide that she just learned it. Part of the show-training,
no doubt. Bruce decided he’d had enough.

“I’m direct,” he said, stopping short of Batman but
adopting the manner he’d use with another CEO. “I’m here for the photo op, not
the show. I’ve been frisked. I’ve been blindfolded. I’m ready for dinner.”
With that, the CEO vanished and the devastating charm of the playboy took his
place. “What do you say?”

“I’ll get in trouble,” she mouthed.

“You really won’t,” he promised with the
smiling assurance that left the most sought-after debs and divorcees weak in the
knees.

“Okay, come on,” she whispered. “I can’t take you straight
in, but we’ll pretend you’re one of the art types that’s more interested in the
design and the restoration.”

He was escorted—with just as much stroking and sniffing but
without the blindfold—to what seemed like an ornate back hallway with brass wall
decor and stair rails, lit by multicolored lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling
fixtures. The attendant said despite the appearance of an elaborate
restoration, all of it was completely new. Reaching what looked like a
service-elevator bay, they came to a well-known Hollywood director enjoying foie
gras gougères and a private performance of a pas de deux.

“Elevator door also fake,” his guide confided.

Bruce was tempted to say the same of the director’s hair,
but since it was the Fop’s final appearance and the guy wasn’t actually wearing
a hairpiece, he let the opportunity pass.

“And this is where I leave you,” she said as they entered
the foyer outside the ballroom. “Once there are 200 people passing through, you
won’t be able to smell it, but the incense here is amber. That’s the butterfly
wall,” she said, pointing to the mandella pattern made up of thousands of
butterfly wings. “It’s meant to introduce themes of metamorphosis that you’ll
see throughout the show.”

Selina’s magical escapades with Jason had included a break
in via futhark rune, getting trapped in a pentagon of mirrors and bitch-slapping
a Lady of the Lake, pouring Water of Avalon into a Vessel of Antioch in order to
spy on the Justice League, distributing jade chopstick wands to the Batmen of
different dimension, and traipsing through a Zurich Farmer’s Market to find six
leaves of sage fresh and fragrant and a hand-dipped taper of purest white.
So it was a relief when all he wanted for this voice-lending spell was a trip to
the candy machine.

“Very important to have sugar in the blood stream,” he
reminded her, handing her a Twix bar while he bought three for himself.

“Yeah but I’m not channeling any magic,” she pointed out,
chasing after him as he continued to Claire’s room.

“That’s why you only need to eat one,” he said. “You must
eat a sweet taken from my hand.”

“Bloody magicians have more rules than Batman,” she
muttered. “You know how I hate rules.”

The next minutes were spent munching, after which Jason
rubbed his hands together with a chipper “Now then” that sounded unnervingly
like Selina’s own voice getting Whiskers and Nutmeg into the carrier for a trip
to the vet. Jason stood before her, placing a hand on each of her upper arms
and ‘adjusting’ her position so their torsos were perfectly parallel. Then he
rapidly touched the center of her forehead, the center of her lips and the
center of her throat—though the last was more of a poke that elicited an angry
“Hey.”

He turned away from her and regarded Claire.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“That’s it,” he intoned, touching Claire’s throat first,
then her lips, and finally her forehead.

“Yes, of course, at the polo match,” Selina said—though her
eyes widened in surprise.

“Good,” Jason said. “Introductions would be peculiar under
the circumstances. You’re using her voice, you see. Claire, I need you to tell
me what happened.”

Selina thought Jason might have given her a little more
information about where she was and what was happening, but she couldn’t say
so. She couldn’t seem to say anything. It was as if her brain had forgotten
how to make her thoughts into spoken words. Her voice was doing fine on its
own, however:

“Jason, I’m sorry about dinner. Was planning such a nice
evening for us,” it was saying in an unfocused, dreamy tone while Jason looked
impatient. He was apparently resigning himself to a few minutes chit-chat
before he could steer her back to the subject they cared about, and Selina could
only do likewise.

“Claire, what happened?” he asked finally, doing his
best to punch through the haze of painkillers and trauma while keeping the
frustration out of his tone.

“I was in the kitchen, radio was on,” she said in that
eerily distant voice, then sang softly, “Not crazy, I’m just a little
unwell… Stay a while and maybe then you’ll see, I’m chopping broccoli.”
Jason looked apologetically at Selina, who managed to convey without words that
she didn’t visit her friends when they were in Arkham and this was why.

Claire sang her improvised ditty over the radio
version while she prepped the dinner, but stopped when she heard a knock at the
door.

~Stay a while and maybe then you’ll see, a different
side of me~ the song continued without her until she turned it down. She
hadn’t realized she brought the knife with her until she opened the door and saw
her visitor staring at it.

“Oh. Wow. Hi,” she managed, trying to process what she was seeing without making
too much of a fool of herself—but glad she had the knife. “From the polo
match… Pamela,” she said weakly.

“Actually I prefer Poison Ivy. May I came in?” came the
soft, breathy reply from the woman who looked nothing like she had at the polo
grounds.

Claire swallowed. She tried not to be too obvious as she
clutched the knife tighter.

“Um,” she said. She didn’t want to let the psycho-plantlady-monster-criminal
into her house, even though monsters and criminals don’t generally ask. Still.
“I have somebody coming over,” she managed. “Not a great time. Maybe you could
uh, you know, call tomorrow and we could meet. Somewhere. Else.”

“I
won’t stay long,” Ivy said, brushing past Claire and walking to the center of
her living room. “This is nice. A little on the small side. You expect that
in the city, but out here, I would have thought you’d have more space. Don’t
worry, we’ll fix that.”

“You’ll probably think I’m very stupid,” Claire said tactfully. “You introduced
yourself as Pamela when we met, and I wasn’t completely sure you were… I mean
you did talk about plants and your skin is on the green side.”

“It is not; it’s alabaster. Was anyway,” Ivy said, fluctuating between
kneejerk anger and embarrassed acceptance. Then she broke into a too-wide
smile. “Well anyway, I understand. You weren’t sure who you were talking to
and because you’re a nice, polite sort of woman, you didn’t want to make any
assumptions. But now you see there’s no room for doubt.”

“That is some serious green,” Claire said. “What happened. I mean, down the
center like that. Did Two-Face do something to you?”

“Let’s leave him out of it,” Ivy said tersely. “I want you to tell me more
about horses, why you like them and… well.. why you don’t go after the people
that hurt them.”

“I’m a veterinarian,” Claire said.

“Yes, I know that,” Ivy said through clenched teeth. “So, what, you’ll help
some poor creature that’s been abused, but you don’t go after the ones who did
it. Why not? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to see them stopped?”

“Very much,” Claire said sincerely.

“So
why don’t you stop them?! They’re just going to keep on doing it. They’re
depraved monsters who can’t cut it among their own kind, so rather than slink
off and die like the failures that they are, they take it out on whoever they
can.” As she spoke, a hairline strip down the center of her breastbone grew a
bit darker where the green skin met the pink. As her words became more
venomous, her breathing became more labored and the dark strip seemed to widen,
just a little.

“I
suppose because there are other people who do that. People better suited to
that kind of work. Police and government agencies. I treat the wounds, ease an
animal’s pain. They wouldn’t know how to do that, probably wouldn’t enjoy it.
And I wouldn’t enjoy ‘bashing the bad guys.’ They do their thing and I do
mine.”

“Hmph,” was all Ivy could think to say. Then she sat down and asked for some
water. Claire went into the kitchen, but as it connected to the living room,
Ivy continued the conversation as she went. “You may all need to double up on
some jobs. Take on additional tasks. We’ll see how it goes. Of course there
will be some jobs going away altogether.”

“Oh, and why is that?” Claire asked, returning with a glass but still holding
the knife behind her back.

“Fewer people. Humans are very bad animals, they take far more than their
share. We have to cut down their numbers, drastically. Plants should be
the dominant species on the planet. People will be staff. The privilege of
eating plant life will be confined to those animals that know their place, and
the remaining people can subsist on those animals, which they may kill.
Although the whole idea of cultivating livestock has to go. They’ll feed the
cattle too much, greedy pigs. The natural herbivores can eat their fill
naturally, and these reduced-number humans may live on them.”

“You will be a great help to me there,” Ivy declared. “Persephone to my
Demeter. You can advise me on the animals, and I shan’t be at all cross if you
play favorites. Horses are your babies, I understand that and I respect it. I
expect you to put their interests above that of lesser beasts, like say cats.
Yes, you’re a much better choice. Horses are herbivores. Cats are… well the
point is, I would much rather deal with you. Approved agriculture will
continue, of course. Approved plant products, such as cotton sheets. Cotton
will be vital in many ways…”

Selina was poking Jason’s arm repeatedly while her mouth
chattered on outlining Ivy’s Utopia as she’d explained it to Claire. Unable to
even mouth the words she wished to convey, she could only improvise an ad hoc
sign language—the repeated scratching motion hinting that she wanted him to ask
Claire what she meant about the cats.

“Selina, please, that is hardly the most pressing issue,”
Jason said, while she responded “The chains of the slave race homo sapien
sapien.”

Selina’s furious gestures responded, pointing to herself
then indicating cat whiskers, cat ears, shaking her head no, the spot on her
thigh where the whip was holstered, a curtsy and giving the bird. Her voice
said “She actually said that. I mean those actual words, ‘slave race homo
sapien sapien’.”

“Yes, I think it’s possible she meant that if she
didn’t have Claire to turn to then you would be her ‘spokeswoman’ for the animal
kingdom,” Jason said irritably. “But it’s not like Claire can ask now. She’s
only telling us what Ivy said.”

“Like the idea isn’t bad enough on its own, she’s got to be
a total drama queen on top of that,” Selina-Claire replied.

“And if we could get clarification, Selina, what then?
What could Claire or Ivy say that you might believe? What reassurance could you
possibly have?”

Selina kicked him in the shin, and Etrigan laughed in
delight.

“I felt sick,” Claire-Selina continued. “I was trying to
tell myself I wasn’t understanding her. Ever since ‘drastically reduce their
numbers,’ I told myself I wasn’t understanding, it had to mean something
other than what it sounded like. I was listening but at the same time, I
was jumping all kinds of hurdles inside trying to think what else those words
could mean. But now ‘cotton is the going to be the chains of the slave race,’
there’s no way you can spin that away from bonkers. The only hope left was that
the whole thing could be some kind of crazy prank. A green person knocks on
your door and starts telling you they want to take over the world with
cotton... But I don’t know anybody who would play a joke like that, and it
couldn’t be one of those reality shows, not inside my home. I just… I didn’t
know what to do. I couldn’t believe what was happening and I didn’t know what
to do.”

She sounded pitiful. Selina was horrified at the
bewildered pain in her own voice—and more horrified at Jason’s seeming
indifference. Her eyes mirrored the confused anguish in her tone and she shoved
him, meaning that he should go to the bed, hug the poor woman or squeeze her
hand, and offer some kind of love and assurance. All he did was produce a glare
that said ‘stop hitting me’ with the same silent eloquence as all of her
previous outbursts.

“I had the knife. I tried to make her leave,” Selina said
with a heartbreaking sob. “I did it wrong. I made everything worse. The next
thing I knew, I was being torn up inside. Like, under my clothes, all over my
skin, trying to get underneath my skin. It hurt. Jason, it hurt so m—”

The sound cut off as Jason abruptly closed his
fist, and Selina’s head snapped back with a gasp as if the breath had been
violently yanked from her throat.

“My apologies,” he said dryly. “I fear she was about to
get loud as she relived the attack.”

“No she wasn’t,” Selina said hoarsely.

“I couldn’t risk her raising her voice.”

“She wasn’t reliving it, she was remembering. She wasn’t
going to scream. And if she did, you’ve already bewitched the nurse. You just
weren’t up to hearing it.”

Jason turned from Selina and looked at Claire. “I heard
enough,” he said. It wasn’t the voice she knew—or rather, it wasn’t a Jason
Blood voice she knew. It was more like a Bat-gravel when he wasn’t Batman
anymore, when it was the mountain creaking before an earthquake. Her heart
stopped as Jason—her friend Jason—turned back, his eyes glowing red with demonic
fury. “Haven’t you?” he asked, freezing her in that stare. “You who can take
my hand and feel Etrigan’s malice coursing through it, tilt your head and make a
joke in the presence of pure Evil. Haven’t you heard enough?”

“Jason, don’t,” she whispered before it hit, then a
dizzying spell gripped her mind like the flash of a distant explosion reaching
her before the sound of the blast. The first waves of fear and dread, moving at
the speed of light, reaching her before anything else, then the concussive blast
of betrayal, the pain and cruelty, treachery and lies. Finally, the sound of
the explosion:

“Change, change the form of man; free the prince forever
damned. Free the might from fleshy mire; boil the blood in heart of fire.
Gone, gone the form of man, and rise the demon Etrigan.”